*XVII.*
All day Mackenzie sat by Trevelyan, scarcely leaving him, except to makehis rounds; Clarke and the orderlies taking charge of the two smallwards and the needs of those there. And all day Mackenzie sat stoicallylooking off into space or turning to feel Trevelyan’s pulse or watch thechange of his face. There was not a shadow of a change he did not watchand note. Trevelyan’s great form lay motionless—deadened by morphia,the occasional twitching of the limbs and the heavy breathing, the onlysigns of life. Now and then, as the effect of the morphia lifted, hewould turn his head restlessly and murmur incoherent things, or call forwater, and Mackenzie would force a teaspoonful at a time of the coolliquid between the rigid lips.
Once Trevelyan’s hand went up with a spasmodic motion to his throat, andthe movement pulled and tore aside the covering across his chest, andexposed to view the white scar on his shoulder. Mackenzie leaning overhim to replace the covering, was attracted by the sight of the oldwound, and he hesitated and leaned a little nearer, examining it.
A sudden death-like quiet brooded over the ward, and the minuteslengthened and still Mackenzie leaned over the unconscious figure, hiseyes fixed on the scar. By and by he looked at Trevelyan’s gray andsunken and unconscious face, and a swift change passed over his ownimpenetrable features, and he drew the covering quickly over the scar,as though he were ashamed.
Clarke came in and Mackenzie straightened himself and turned to meethim, his hand upon the covering that hid the scar. There was somethingdefiant in the attitude.
Clarke came up and stood on the other side of the bed.
"What do you think of it?" he asked.
"I don’t want to think anything about it," Mackenzie answered shortly.
"But his chances?" asked Clarke after a little. "Has he got any show?"
"He’s got a damned bad case," said Mackenzie, "and no strength to fightit with. I knew it would be just this way if he ever got it—he’d haveit _bad_! There’s nothing half way about him!"
Clarke tapped his foot against the floor and looked down at it..
"How he could have loved some woman," he said.
Mackenzie turned his head slowly and looked at Trevelyan. Once he hadseen a look in Trevelyan’s eyes— When he spoke it was as if he werethinking aloud. "How he loved some woman!"
Trevelyan moved restlessly and opened his eyes, and looked at Mackenzieand Clarke and then back to Mackenzie. There was nothing in his facethat led them to suppose he had heard.
Mackenzie leaned over him.
"How are you?"
"Deuced bad," Trevelyan said slowly, and then the nausea returned.
The man in the next bed began to moan a little. Trevelyan turned toMackenzie, a frown upon his face, as though he was trying to place thesound.
"What is it?" he asked. "What’s that noise?"
"It’s McHennessy—you’d better let us move you into our room."
Trevelyan shook his head.
"I suppose it’s a blamed silly notion, but I’d rather be with the men."And then he stretched out his cold hands suddenly and graspedMackenzie’s convulsively, "The pain," he said.
Mackenzie looked up at Clarke and nodded to the question in the other’seyes.
Mackenzie took out his handkerchief and wiped the great beads offTrevelyan’s forehead. When Clarke returned with the morphia, the nauseahad come again.
Trevelyan waved Clarke aside.
"I don’t want it," he whispered hoarsely. "I couldn’t keep it downanyway, and—I—don’t—want it!"
And when he was not to be persuaded Mackenzie let him back slowly on thepillow.
All night the nausea lasted, but in the early morning there camecessation for a time, and Mackenzie left Clarke with him, and went tosnatch a bit of sleep.
Clarke watched by him in silence—dumb with the terribleness of it all;dumb with his own powerlessness to help—and Trevelyan was grateful forthe cessation and the silence.
When the cessation came his thoughts went out to Cary, and they drew thememory of her face to him. It was in truth a dream of heaven—and real,untouched by the thralldom of the morphia.
He was growing weaker—he could feel the ebbing of his strength—and hedid not care. In the morning he had fought against it, as he had foughteverything all his life—passionately, but now with the cessation and thecoming of the dream face, he did not care.
He clung to the vision of the dream though, fiercely, as though fearingit would escape him and be lost forever. He had loved her, and he lovedher still!
His love for her had been as a mountain that has been stripped in astorm of its fairest foliage; that has been wrecked by a great firewhich has swept it of all its rarest beauty, leaving only the barenessof the boulders, but withstanding the wreck of the storm and the fire.So his love had stood and endured as a sample of the Eternal Handiwork—abasis of his life, as is love the basis of the life of the Everlasting.
He was conscious of the clasp of Clarke’s fingers on his wrist, and thesudden appearance of a frightened orderly with the intelligence thatBurns, in the next ward, was worse, and would he come at once; and hewas dimly conscious of Clarke’s bending over him and of his telling himto go to Burns, but he still clung to the vision of the dream face.Desperately he clung to it, even when the blessed cessation suddenlyceased, and it seemed as though he was being engulfed in a great abyssof unspeakable agony, and he kept his thoughts upon it as a crusaderwould have kept his dying thoughts upon the unattainable quest.
And then he became dimly conscious of a low moaning sound and he laystill trying, to place it, because Mackenzie was not there to tell himwhat it was, and he had forgotten what Mackenzie had said it was, but hestill tried to concentrate his thoughts on the dream face that wasgrowing faint and fainter. The effort was a complete failure, and thelow moaning increased. He fixed it slowly as coming from the next bed.He turned his head toward it weakly. The incoherent ravings became apiteous and conscious cry for water.
The gray dawn crept in slowly and up to the trooper’s bed, and by itslight Trevelyan could see him turning his head restlessly from side toside. Still the cry for water reached him.
It did not seem to affect him much at first, or pierce the consciousnessof pity, but it annoyed him, and it kept coming between him and thedream face he was struggling so desperately to hold. And then it struckon him suddenly like a blow and he awoke to the man’s anguish and theman’s need—how often he had answered to that need and cry before! Helooked toward the farthest corner of the room where an orderly laysleeping from exhaustion. The man was half sick anyway, from a recentattack of the scourge. He did not want to call him; but if he wouldonly awaken—if he only would.
He waited. There was no sound from the corner; there was no movement inthe hall that would tell of Clarke’s return, and the low cry went on.Since the day he had joined Mackenzie he had followed and responded tothat cry as the soldier follows and responds to the first low notes ofthe bugle. He pushed himself over to the edge of the bed and tried tosit up but the motion increased his agony and he lay still. He wonderedblindly if he could do it. Then he let himself roll over the side ofthe bed and his big frame fell with a dull thud on the rough boards ofthe floor. He lay there a second, but there was no movement from thecorner. He pulled himself up, took half a dozen steps toward the waterbucket in the near corner, and then the cramp came back again in hislegs, and he fell forward, and began to creep toward it on his hands andknees. The dream face was fading and being swallowed up in a breakingcrest of white sea foam, and there seemed to be nothing in the world butthe man’s cry and his own pain.
He reached the bucket and he dipped in the glass that stood near andfilled it, and then began his slow journey to the man’s bed. By thedeepening light in the east the man could see the great creeping figureapproaching, and he drew back, afraid.
"It’s only I, McHennessy. I’ve got some water—" the voice trailed off,but the trooper caugh
t the word "water" and he struggled to a recliningposition and waited. The figure moved so slowly and his throat was aburning sheet of flame! Why didn’t he come faster—what was the matterthat he didn’t come faster; and McHennessy’s blood-shot eyes wereriveted on the slowly moving figure.
Trevelyan reached him at length and pulled himself up with a supremeeffort, with the glass balanced very carefully in his hand. He wasstriving—striving too—after that elusive dream face.
He leaned over McHennessy with the water, and McHennessy with a sigh ofecstasy struggled up in his bed and leaned forward to touch his parchedlips to the glass.
Trevelyan brought it up nearer and his hand wavered. He controlled itwith a great effort of will for a moment, and then the glass trembledand its contents were spilt over McHennessy, and the glass crashed intoshivers as it fell to the floor beside the bed. Trevelyan flung out hisarms suddenly, groping for the dream face that had gone.
The orderly, awakened by the crash, started up and ran over to whereTrevelyan lay on the floor by the side of McHennessy, who was swearingover the unexpected bath, and as he staggered beneath Trevelyan’sweight, Mackenzie came quickly forward from the threshold of the door.Together they carried Trevelyan back to bed and Mackenzie silently drewthe coverings over his rigid body and stood looking down at the lividlips and listening to the slow, feeble breathing. Once he picked up thehand that lay on the outside of the covering and examined it, and thenlaid it back in its resting place.
"_Trevelyan lay on the floor._"]
Clarke who had heard the glass break, hurried in from the adjoiningward. Mackenzie looked up as he entered.
"_Collapse?_" asked Clarke briefly.
Mackenzie did not seem to hear him.
"Bring the salt—it’s just a chance," he said.
The Potter and the Clay: A Romance of Today Page 38
